Media Naturalness Theory

Media naturalness theory was developed by Ned Kock. This theory is sometimes referred to as the psychobiological model, or compensatory adaptation theory. It has been used to understand human behavior toward technology in various contexts, such as: education, knowledge transfer, communication in virtual environments, e-negotiation, business process improvement, trust and leadership in virtual teamwork, online learning, maintenance of distributed relationships, performance in experimental tasks using various media, and modular production. Media naturalness theory can be considered a Darwinian theory of behavior toward certain types of communication media. Its development is also consistent with ideas from the field of evolutionary psychology.

The theory builds on human evolution ideas and has been proposed as an alternative to media richness theory. Media naturalness theory argues that since our Stone Age hominid ancestors have communicated primarily face-to-face, evolutionary pressures have led to the development of a brain that is consequently designed for that form of communication. Other forms of communication are too recent and unlikely to have posed evolutionary pressures that could have shaped our brain in their direction. Using communication media that suppress key elements found in face-to-face communication, as many electronic communication media do, thus ends up posing cognitive obstacles to communication. This is particularly the case in the context of complex tasks (e.g., business process redesign, new product development, online learning), because such tasks seem to require more intense communication over extended periods of time than simple tasks.